Last night, during Sandy, Fort Greene was whipped by winds and rain. My house shook, and eventually a painting fell off the wall. Horizontal rain blacked out the windows at times, and atmospheric noises ranged from a guttural hum to an unsettling mechanical squeak. That was about it for doom, though, and all of it peanuts compared to what happened elsewhere in Brooklyn and in the other boroughs. When I woke up, our neighborhood was much the same, except that a beloved corner deli had lost its awning. Not so for friends and family in Manhattan; I’ve spent over forty years in the city and I’ve never seen Avenue C underwater.

According to veloroutes, my house in Fort Greene is seventy-five feet above sea level. Fort Defiance, an excellent Red Hook restaurant, is elevated above the sea by only sixteen feet. From a Facebook post by the restaurant’s owner, St. John Frizell: “We got about six inches of water in the dining room, and the basement was completely submerged.” Hot Bird, a popular bar in Clinton Hill, is eighty-two feet above sea level, and sustained no major damage. You get the idea.

Marathon runners know exactly how much the city goes up and down. Check this chart from the 2005 N.Y.C. marathon and you’ll see that the second half of the race, which runs through Fort Greene, averages well above fifty feet above sea level. This pdf of the rebranded ING marathon path shows, similarly, that as the race moves deeper into Brooklyn, around 15-K, the elevation increases.

Avenue C and Red Hook are close to the water, so what happened there wasn’t exactly unexpected. But when mayhem like Sandy comes to town, much of what you know about the city goes out the window. The corner of Canal and Hudson—which flooded, as seen in this fantastic New York Times graphic—isn’t that close to the water (about forty feet above sea level) and the water in question wasn’t clearly rainfall or tidal overflow. Was it just backed up sewage? And why did the Con Ed substation on Fourteenth Street kinda sorta blow up? Flooding and airborne debris are both suspects. The apocalypse thrives on confusion. Brooklyn was supposed to be more vulnerable with all of our power lines on poles, intermingling with trees. Manhattan’s subterranean cables were supposed to be safe from harm. Well.

We do know a few things. On The Nation’s Web site, Mike Tidwell wrote about the variables that are making Sandys more likely, and more common:

Oceans worldwide are projected to rise as much as three more feet this century—much higher if the Greenland ice sheet melts away. Intense storms are already becoming much more common. These two factors together will in essence export the plight of New Orleans, bringing the Big Easy “bowl” effect here to New York City and Washington, as well as to Charleston, Miami, New York and other coastal cities.

Real-estate agents won’t have as much luck selling river views, and may end up appealing to fear, that reliable unit-shifter. On Craiglist, next to pitches like “Granite Kitchen, X-bRICK, hardwood floors,” expect to see “elevation 80 and above!!!” As amateur experts on French medieval history already know, “holding the high ground is critical.” Look for Trump to build his next apartment block on Battle Hill, allegedly the highest point in Brooklyn. Or he can just put Manhattan on his hair.